Kevin Cooper is an innocent man on San Quentin’s Death Row in California. He continues to struggle for exoneration and to abolish the death penalty in the whole U.S.
For centuries certain groups of people have been speaking to other groups of people concerning our humanity. This is still being done in order to try and convince those people to end the death penalty.
Yet it appears that no matter how long, or how hard, certain people tried to speak to other people about humanity, if they don’t want to be spoken to, or don’t see what they are doing as inhumane, or in fact they are inhumane themselves, they won’t listen.
Nor can one speak to immoral people about morality, or shameless people about feeling shame for their acts. Nor can certain people speak to others about having a conscience when they are without a conscience.
Why? Because most, if not all death penalty supporters are coldblooded and coldhearted and mean spirited people! People like politicians, and those who support those types of people with that type of mindset! One can’t speak to hypocrites about hypocrisy, because those words, like all the others, fall on deaf ears.
Not all, but the majority, of death penalty supporters in this day and age are Republicans, and every type of poll speaks to this fact.
Yet the Republican Party as a whole claims to be against the government. Especially any government that interferes in anyone’s life, or tells them what to do, or what to think, or how to act, or what to believe or what not to believe. They want government out of people’s lives!
That is until it comes to the penalty of death in this country, which can’t take place without the involvement and approval of the government, be it state or federal.
The death penalty is at a crossroads in this country, especially in certain states. This is because it has been proven that the death penalty in America is broken. It’s inhumane and downright torturous to the condemned who, by the way, happen to be citizens of this country, all poor.
In order for the death penalty to be brought to an end, there needs to be truth in the discussion of what this system of capital punishment really is. Even though for some people, the truth may be hard to accept. Because of this, they will continue to live in their world of fantasy and deny the truth, and the facts based on the truth that this is one of the most important human rights issues of our time!
This will not however change the fact that fantasy is not reality, not even in America, when it comes to this truth: The death penalty in America is just another failed government program. It’s not just rotten; it’s not just broken, it’s not just inhumane, it’s failed!
In Struggle from San Quentin Prison, Death Row
—November 2014
Write to Kevin Cooper at:
Kevin Cooper C-65304, 4 EB 82
San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin, CA 94974